Jury Convicts Windsor Man, 22, In 1993 Murder

A 22-year-old Windsor man was convicted of murder Tuesday in the 1993 fatal shooting of a Canton man in Hartford, after the two had confronted one another with guns over a botched drug deal.

Jay Murray, 37, of 2 Forest Lane, Canton, was shot while sitting in his pickup on Aug. 27, 1993.

A 12-member jury returned the verdict against Devon Taylor in Hartford Superior Court. The jury deliberated for about five days before reaching its decision. Judge David M. Barry is scheduled to sentence Taylor Dec. 9.

FOR THE RECORD - Correction was published October 18, 1997 on Page A2.* Jay Murray was unarmed and did not have an armed confrontation with Devon Taylor on Aug. 27, 1993, according to evidence presented at a Hartford Superior Court trial. That information was incorrectly reported in a story on Page B11 Wednesday about Taylor being convicted of murdering Murray.

Hartford Dets. Timothy Pitkin and Luisa St. Pierre connected Taylor, of 34 Arrowbrook Road, to the shooting through witnesses' statements and five latent fingerprints taken from the victim's pickup truck. An informant told police that Taylor had been driving the truck and shot him after the victim pulled a gun on him during the botched drug deal, police evidence showed.

Murray was pronounced dead from chest and abdomen wounds at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center the night of Aug. 27. He had driven from his home in Canton to Hartford to buy cocaine, said police.

Another witness, Taylor's former girlfriend, Kewanna Carlton, told police that Taylor admitted to the shooting shortly afterward and then rode by the crime scene and watched police rope off the area, a police affidavit says.

Taylor was arrested in March 1995 on warrants charging him with murder and other criminal violations. Police lured him to a Weston Street gasoline station after they arranged a drug sale by contacting him through his beeper number.

A police officer, posing as a drug customer, arranged to meet him at the Exxon gasoline station at 125 Weston St. to pick up an ``8-ball'' of crack cocaine, police said.